Taylor Swift didn’t hold back when sharing details about her very first date with Kansas City Chiefs star Travis Kelce, a meeting that took place shortly after the tight end attended her Eras Tour concert in Kansas City during the summer of 2023.
Speaking on Wednesday’s episode of the New Heights podcast, hosted by Travis and his brother, former Philadelphia Eagles center Jason Kelce, the 35-year-old pop superstar admitted she knew almost nothing about football at the time and ended up asking a question she now considers completely absurd.
“I knew he wasn’t crazy the first couple of times we talked… He’s like a human exclamation point,” Swift said with a laugh. “I use so many more exclamation points now. And you weren’t judgmental that I knew nothing about the world you’re in.”
On that first date, Swift remembered turning to Kelce and asking what it was like during the Super Bowl when the Chiefs faced the Eagles, specifically, what it felt like to look across the line of scrimmage and see his brother Jason just a few feet away.
The only problem? As Travis had to point out, that scenario could never have happened; both brothers play offensive positions, meaning they would never line up against each other.
“He didn’t even look at me,” Swift admitted, laughing at herself. “I now know what an insane question that was… I thought everyone was out there at the same time. I didn’t know what a first down was… or what a tight end was. But I fell in love with it, I became obsessed with it.”
The couple eventually went public in October 2023, when they were photographed holding hands in New York City. Swift later revealed in a December interview with Time magazine that they had already been dating for some time before she attended the Chiefs’ September 24 game against the Chicago Bears. At that game, the two made a point of walking in through the general admission entrance together.
“I love this new world that Travis has shown me,” Swift told the podcast audience. “It’s so fun, it’s so exciting. There’s so much pressure on these players… The pressure in sports is such a different type, and I have such respect for everyone, everyone on his team.”
Kelce, for his part, repeatedly called himself “the luckiest guy in the world.” At one point, he noted that as a player, he never truly experienced watching from a stadium suite. Swift quickly jumped in with a playful jab: “Because there was never a camera on it.”
Before meeting Kelce, Swift said sports were only a small part of her life. Growing up in Pennsylvania, she mostly associated football with hearing her dad yell at the TV during Eagles games, and she would attend sporting events mainly to sing the national anthem. “Everything was a means to an end to get me to do music,” she said.
Still, her feelings have changed. “I definitely became obsessed with sports because of [Travis],” she admitted. “I’m competitive on his behalf.”
Earlier in the show, Swift also credited the New Heights podcast with bringing them together in the first place, joking, “It got me a boyfriend because Travis decided to use it as his personal dating app two years ago.”